A New Division
I was always different. Different from my littermates, different from my clanmates, even different from cats from other clans. Different from pretty much every cat I know, except for a loner who I met on the border once. I could identify with him. But he's the only one. I recognized that dullness in his eyes, the curl of his smile, the way each paw-step he took said I will fight to the end. He was almost my mirror image, in terms posture. We both had a resoluteness that followed us wherever we went. We both had a hard time making friends, and a harder time keeping them. There was only one difference between us besides our coloring, at the time I met him. He was a middle-aged cat, and I was a small kit. My backstory is a... different one, different than most other cats. If you were listing the cats with the most peculiar histories, I'd be right up there with the best of them. It all started before I was born. And I know exactly who's fault it was. Redclaw was a respectable warrior. He was a strict follower of the warrior code and believer of Starclan. He distributed discipline fairly, and only where it was due. At least, that's what he wanted cats to think. In reality, he was a backstabbing animal who had little regard for the warrior code, or the well-being of other cats in general. Shortly after he became deputy, Redclaw began seeing my mother in secret. Though as good of a cat as any, she fell prey to love's poison and almost wanted to have his kits, when she realized the wrong of her actions and ran away. She quickly fell in love again, this time with a warrior of her own clan. Redclaw hated her for this. Soon after, in a battle of Shadowclan and Thunderclan (I can't remember what it was over, probably some small thing that offended one of the leaders) He sought out my mother's mother, whom she loved dearly, and killed her. My mother inevitably became very depressed after this incident. Her temper that she had learned to suppress broke out at random times, and cats began avoiding her to avoid her rage. This was actually the worst thing to do; if anything could have helped her at that time, it would have been a friend. After a moon of this treatment, my mother left. She snuck out of camp in the middle of the night and hid in the snowy, Alaskan forests beyond our territory. It was here she gave birth to my siblings and I. I had three- siblings, that is. Not that that really matters. They never survived past two sunrises. My mother could barely take care of herself, let alone four little ones. I was naturally the strongest of the four. It was obvious that if any would survive, I would. I don't blame myself for my sibling's death. As a newborn kit, it was my natural instinct to push my weak siblings out of the way in competition for the most milk and the warmest place to sleep. It wasn't my fault that I was the lucky one. If I hadn't done so, we all would have died. Better one than none. Mom never returned to camp. And that's probably best. No more memories of what happened. Just shut it all in. And she tried. She tried to shut in her feelings and her memories and everything about her old life, but she couldn't. Not all the way. It would peek out sometimes, making my mom very irritable. Unusually irritable. Irritable to the point where she would hurt me for no apparent reason. Usually it wasn't anything big (in her mind)- a hard nip to the back, or the ear. Sometimes a scratch. Or a cuff. A couple times she actually put me outside and wouldn't let me back in. That might not sound like much, but to a kit, it is. A scratch, a gouge. A cuff, a concussion. Fifteen minutes in the snow, a near death experience. She always apologized afterwards, mind you. She would be nice to me for a day or so after the incident. Then back to her normal self, which wasn't that great either. I'm not trying to say my mom was the worst all the time. She was okay. She taught me mostly everything I needed to know to survive, and what she didn't teach me, I observed. It just wasn't that great. A couple moons after the time I would be apprenticed in the clans, my mother left. I didn't know where I went, but I was smart enough to know that, even though I knew basic skills, I probably wouldn't survive winter by myself. I didn't know that the warrior code forbid contact with twolegs. I was by blood a Thunderclan cat, but a loner by how I was raised. I did know that some twolegs were nice, and some weren't, but a few would feed you and let you in their dens. So I went to the twolegplace.